WEST — Mayor Tommy Muska made it clear to hundreds of residents still reeling from Wednesday’s devastating industrial explosion here: The path forward is going to be painfully slow.

Muska said Saturday that a methodical search by federal investigators for every scrap of physical evidence is blocking access to the houses closest to West Fertilizer Co. and Adair Grain.

He told those who live in that area to find long-term housing and begin buying new clothes.

Muska’s candid assessments came during his first public meeting with residents since the explosion that killed at least 14 people and injured more than 200. An estimated 50 houses were destroyed.

Muska opened his town hall-style meeting, at the Knights of Columbus hall north of town, with a prayer for patience.

“This is going to be a marathon,” he then told residents. “This is not a sprint.”

He said electricity has been cut off to the hardest-hit area, and that investigators are still there collecting debris from the plant.

Small fires broke out at the fertilizer plant site on Saturday, but Bryce Reed, a town spokesman, said they were contained and posed no new hazard. The fires were caused by leaking gas from heat-damaged tanks, he said.

The fires — and one journalist’s Twitter message about a “threat of another explosion” — set off rumors that Mayor Pro Tem Steve Vanek did his best to quickly dispel.

“It is safe, it is safe, it is safe,” he said at an afternoon press conference.

Also on Saturday, the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, one of several agencies investigating the fire and explosion, returned control of about five residential blocks to city officials.

West’s leaders then allowed those whose houses were in the secured area farthest from the blast to visit their homes. They officials gave no indication of when more people may be given access to their homes.

By the end of the day, officials had yet to release an official list of those killed.

No survivors were found during a 36-hour search-and-rescue effort that took in the plant site and about 150 homes in the surrounding blocks. That effort ended Friday night.

It could be weeks, even months, before the cause of the fire and explosion is known.

The plant had at least 540,000 pounds of ammonium nitrate, a violently combustible compound, in storage last year, state records show. Ammonium nitrate, a fertilizer, is also used in explosives for mining, road-building and other commercial uses.

The amount stored at the West plant in 2012, according to the state records, was more than 100 times the weight of the ammonium nitrate and fuel oil mixture used in the 1995 bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City.

Companies must report the storage of large volumes of volatile chemicals to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, which then can help measure risks and devise security plans. Reuters News Service reported Saturday that West Fertilizer Co. had not submitted such a report, but Homeland Security officials could not be reached to confirm that.

A House Homeland Security Committee aide said the federal rules were developed “to serve as a counterterrorism tool, not an industrial workplace safety apparatus.”

According to West Fertilizer Co., the plant consisted of 11 buildings on 10 acres. It employed 13 people, one of whom was a volunteer firefighter who died in the explosion.

One part of the business sold fertilizers. Another sold grain, feed and farming tools. The company mixed fertilizers tailored to farmers’ specific needs, which were determined by testing soil samples.

The search for survivors was led by two state teams, College Station-based Texas Task Force 1 and Dallas-based Texas Task Force 2. They searched the three buildings that sustained the most damage: an apartment complex and two homes just east of the fertilizer plant. The two teams slowly expanded their search outward from those three buildings.

“There were large chunks of concrete that had flown probably four or five blocks from the crash site,” said Jeff Saunders, operations chief of Texas Task Force 1.

The last area the two task forces searched was the plant itself. It had smoldered for hours after the blast and, given the extent of the damage, gave rescuers little hope of finding any survivors. About 30 rescuers lined up and walked straight through the site, combing for remains and for evidence of what caused the fire and explosion. They were ordered by the State Fire Marshal’s Office not to discuss what they found.

West residents in need of transportation, financial aid, help with insurance claims or other assistance were instructed to report to a “joint assistance center” at the Knights of Columbus hall.

Some, for example, evacuated Wednesday night without their wallets — or any form of identification. Social Security representatives will be on hand Monday to help them.

Some forms of aid — like mobile washing machines and dispersals from a donated cash fund — have been slow to arrive. But Karen Bernsen, who is acting as a liaison for the more than 100 agencies involved in helping West residents, said the town has been fortunate, and the response relatively quick.

“You may not believe this, but we’ve been told the response for our disaster has been happening at the speed of light,” she said. “It’s hard to believe this happened three days ago. It feels like an eternity.”

She added: “We’re West, and we help each other.”

Children will return to school on Monday, many in the nearby Connally Independent School District, where several schools got together to convert unused facilities, even painting them Trojan red, for the mascot of West High School.

“I was even told the kids’ names are on their lockers,” Bernsen said to applause from a crowd of West residents. “They’ve done whatever so the kids can have the most comfortable, safe environment they can.”

Staff writer Matthew Watkins and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

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